6 minute read
THE HOUSE ON A STEEP HILL by Ann Hite
Bette rearranged my life when she placed a bouquet of a dozen brown sticks about eight inches long in my arms. “Take these home and place them in a vase of water.”
My mother taught me to respect my elders, and at thirty-one the lesson still stuck with me. Betty was eighty-eight. She was shorter than my five feet six inches and her handshake made my fingers ache after she let go. “Before you leave we will dig up a piece of the bush with some roots. You should put it straight in the ground when you get home.” She looked around. “It is the perfect day to plant it. Give the roots some water. This bush is called flowering quince.”
Bette slung the heavy pick over her head and let it drop into the ground. There was no doubt this woman was stronger and could easily run rings around me. Part of me wanted to be her when I finally grew up. As a young woman Bette lived with the well-known author, Cora Harris, as her assistant. She edited and corrected Cora’s writing and spelling. When Bette married, it was to a dashing man, whose family was well known in the area. Her home was a farm at the bottom of a mountain with a house leftover from before the Civil War. Many days I spent in front of the fireplace drinking Russian tea and listening to her tales of literary greats. In this place, I gathered her offering of what looked to be sticks.
When I got home to my house on a steep hill with a quarter-mile long dirt driveway that climbed in a straight line and swallowed cars in the muddy bottom during the winter, I placed the deep brown sticks into a crockery pitcher and placed them on my antique ironing board near the best window in the house. Oversized consisting of multiple panes of glass looking out on a western view of forest. Wooden shutters adorned the windows and folded open to the afternoon sun that helped the wood heater to warm the house on cold winter days. But that day was warm even though it was February. That is the thing about living in North Georgia, temperatures can slide up unexpectedly. Those warm days were the jewels of hope that got me through the frigid cold.
I took advantage of the warm sun and dug a hole in the front of the house near the split rail fence. A view of the same mountain where Betty’s place sat was framed by the crystal blue sky. With tender care, I placed the roots attached to the brown sticks into the cold moist dirt, patting it around the base, giving it support. Could I grow this into something worthy of enjoying? A bush that could be seen from the front porch swing.
Three days later when the bitter cold pushed against my house, the brown sticks—laughed at by another who lived in the house—revealed fat little buds of pale pink. Two days later the sticks were covered with pink and white blooms. A howling wind blew outside, but I sat warm in a favorite chair in front of the window in the puddle of sunlight as heat radiated from the wood stove. Those brown sticks were a work of art, a living still life.
When I left the house on the steep hill for the last time, I did so with a determination as if a life preserver had been thrown my way. Shame filled me—and sometimes still does—that I wouldn’t miss the other soul that lived in the house. The afternoon I drove down the steep driveway, praying I could navigate the mushy mud without bottoming out, I looked into the rear view mirror and caught sight of fat scarlet red buds about to open on the flowering quince bush. This year would be the best blooms since I had planted it the year before. What I didn’t know was the new people who would move into the house would eventually, for whatever reasons, remove the flowering quince bush.
As time went by and I settled into my new life, a creative life, I dreamed of the sunsets that showed through the special window and created an artist canvas of orange, red, and pink. I missed the place that nurtured me as I navigated a bad relationship, but the decision to leave saved who I was to be, an author, a strong woman, and a passionate mother.
Not long ago, I had to visit the house on the steep hill. Much has changed. The house is dark on the inside with new wooden shutters closed tight to the outside world. My beautiful window is gone, replaced with a standard double window. Many trees that the magnificent sunsets filtered through have been cut down and a shed has been built in their place. The front yard is plain and lifeless without the flowering quince. The driveway has been paved for ease of navigating. No real remnant of the house that once guarded and protected this woman’s soul exists. But, I stood and looked at the mountain in the distance, something that couldn’t be erased, and thought of Bette—the woman who showed me a new way to live. She died three years after I left at the age of ninety-two, buried within five minutes of her house and the beautiful rose and flower gardens she cultivated. As I sat in the moment of being, in the place where I found myself, my art, a thought, more like a feeling, entered me. Always the roots of life spring from this space, waiting. Waiting for the next heart ready to bloom and find its way.
